Do Visitors Read Your Website’s Primary Navigation Links

I imagine various experts who conduct eye-tracking studies know more about how visitors interact with a site’s main navigation links, but here’s my take on it.
When visitors, first-time visitors in particular, arrive at your site, I don’t think they bother to read those primary navigation links presented as horizontal tabs at the top, a list of links in the left margin – or however else you display them.
When someone comes to your site for the first time, it would be nice to think that they would browse your major navigation links and get a broad view of what they can find on your site.
But I don’t think this is the case.
I think people’s eyes go directly to that central area, beneath the header and to the right of the left column, if there is one.
It is there that they look for answers to their questions.
And first-time visitors always have questions. The first of these questions are, “Am I in the right place? Will I find what I’m looking for here?”
This may sound fairly obvious, but it places a great deal of pressure on that first screen of the center column of your site.
You can’t expect people to read all your navigation links. Nor can you expect them to read through two or three hundred words of explanatory text during the first few moments on your site.
At best, a visitor will give you the benefit of one, brief, impatient scan.
This means you have just a few moments in which to express your primary value proposition. Use images. Use text. Just be sure that within two or three seconds your visitors will be thinking, “Yes, I am in the right place.”
So how does navigation fit into all this?
On many sites I see that the first screen is indeed used to communicate the main value proposition of the site.
But then visitors are left hanging.
It’s as if the site designer assumes that after reading a few sentences and seeing a few images, every reader will then refer to the primary navigation links to find the next page they should look at.
I don’t think this is a safe assumption.
I think if you have two or three important “next pages”, those pages should be described and linked to from within that first screen on your home page.
On a site where you are selling just one or two products or services, this is pretty simple to do. And most sites like that are already designed with those “next page” links in place. “See demo…”, “Buy now…” and that sort of thing.
But this is a much tougher task when you have a site comprising hundreds or thousands of pages, organized within numerous categories.
In these cases you have to think a little harder, study your site analytics data, and ask yourself the question, “Of all those who come to our home page, which three or four pages do 80% of visitors want to see next?”
When you have the answer, then feature links to those three or four pages within your first screen.
These links don’t replace your primary navigation links. They simply repeat them in an area of the page where your visitors look first.
I guess what I’m saying here is that it’s dangerous to assume that visitors will pay immediate attention to your top or side navigation links.
I think the study of those links occurs only after a first-time visitor feels your site can answer their questions and deliver what they are looking for.
It’s only then that they will feel, “OK, this looks promising. It’s worth checking this site out in more detail.”
Until you get to that point, be sure to include links to key pages within the body of that first screen.